(Source: H/Soz/Kult)
Please find below information regarding the
workshop “Business and the Law. Historical Perspectives on Legal Change”, which
includes several panels with legal historical contributions.
About
Firms act in tightly regulated legal
environments. Yet as new products, production processes, and economic practices
emerged that environment has been constantly questioned, undermined, and
rebuilt. At the same time, legal changes challenged established economic
practices like the ban on child labor or new cartel laws. Our workshop,
generously funded by the DFG, will address the relation of businesses and the
law from a broad and subtle perspective. The aim of the workshop is to
understand legal change as a change in routines that affected the ways in which
businesses and courts interpreted the "rules of the game". Such a
change could manifest itself in written law or lead to a fundamentally
different way of interpreting it. In both cases the focus needs to be on
economic and legal practices, i.e. on the question what the law meant in its
historical context and how it actually affected economic actions.
The workshop focuses on theoretical work as
well as empirical case studies that help to shed light on the historical
transformations of legal institutions at the intersection of businesses and the
law. Papers will address one of the following research questions with a focus
on developments since the 19th century.
1. The Relation of Firm Behavior and the
Law: Conceptual Clarifications and Historical Perspectives
What do we mean when we talk about
"the law" and its effects on business practices? What is "legal
change" and what are the possible channels through which such change can
take place? To what extent did the meaning of the law change itself over time?
The first section of the workshop is intended to discuss some of the underlying
concepts and theories important for understanding the problem of the
relationship of business behavior and the law. Such a clarification includes
discussing the law as a restraining and enabling institution as well as the
question of relevant actors. We assume that economists, historians, and legal
scholars may have different views on what they perceive as "the law"
or "legal institutions".
2. Lobbying, Legal Entrepreneurs and Legal
Change
In which ways have firms tried to
manipulate legislative and judicial power to change the legal framework? What
do we know about the decision making processes inside the firms or by
individual businessmen to act as "political entrepreneurs"? Is it
possible to make statements about the effects of such interventions? Papers
will focus on historical case studies from different time periods that shed
some light on these questions.
3. Business Practices and Regulation /
Business Law and Its Effects
What effects had legal change, whether a
new law or the removal of an old one, on firm behavior? Did firms comply with
the new legal rules or did they try to undermine it, sticking to the routines
they had been used to? What were the long term effects of such firm reactions
on legal practice and written law? Historical case studies seem to suggest that
negotiations could be very complicated with different degrees of success.
Although the intentions of lawmakers could be realized to some extent, as in
the case of cartel law after the Second World War, firm reactions played an
important part regarding how new laws were implemented in practice. A number of
different historical papers will address these issues.
4. Rule-Breaking and Business Scandals
What happened to the legal environment when
firms and entrepreneurs simply failed to play by the rules? History is full of
such cases, including scandalous fraud schemes as well as cases in which legal
rule breaking was perceived as legitimate and a result of outdated legal
regulations. Yet what distinguished the criminal behavior of Bernard Madoff
from the copy right infringements of Pirate Bay or Google Books if it could not
have been rule-breaking per se? Why did some cases of legal rule-breaking lead
to a tightening of the rules while others led to their re-interpretation or
elimination? In this section case studies will discuss and explain the effects
of business crime – understood broadly and independent of whether perceived as
legitimate or illegitimate - on legal institutions.
Programm
June 21
Welcome and Introduction (Louis Pahlow and
Sebastian Teupe)
Panel 1: Conceptual Clarifications (Chair:
Louis Pahlow)
Martha Prevezer (Queen Mary University of
London): "Relationship between Firm Behaviour and the Law. Conceptual
Clarifications and Historical Perspectives".
Sebastian Teupe (University of Bayreuth): "Business
History and the Law".
Panel 2: Lobbying, Legal Entrepreneurs and
Legal Change. Pt. 1. (Chair: Kim Priemel)
Samuel Klebaner (University of Bordeaux):
"Managing Technical Changes from the Scales of Legal Regulation. German
Clean Cars against the European Pollutant Emissions Regulations in the
1980s".
Harald Espeli (BI Norwegian Business
School, Oslo): "Business Influence on the Late Enactment of Limited
Liability Companies in Norway. The Role of Shipping Interests
(1880-1916)".
Brian Cheffins (University of Cambridge):
"Law and the Divorcing of Ownership and Control in Corporate
America".
June 22
Panel 3: Lobbying, Legal Entrepreneurs and
Legal Change. Pt. 2. (Chair: Sebastian Teupe)
Franz Hederer (University of Frankfurt):
"Lobbyists as Lawmakers? The Economic Council in Weimar Germany as an
actor in economic policy".
Peter Labuza (USC School of Cinematic Arts,
Los Angeles): "United Arithmetic. Legal Contracts and the Financialization
of Corporate Governance and Executive Labor in the Motion Picture
Industry".
Panel 4: Business Practices and Regulation
(Chair: Robert Bernsee)
Michael Buchner (Universität des
Saarlandes, Saarbrücken): "Legal Change and Business Practices: The Role
of Commercial Usages. Some Examples from Securities Trading in 19th Century
Germany".
Thomas Storrs (University of North Carolina
at Greensboro): "This Will Drive Them Wild…Wild. Comptroller James Saxon’s
Transformation of American Banking, 1961-1966".
Panel 5: Rule-Breaking and Business
Scandals (Chair: Jan-Otmar Hesse)
Eva Schäffler (Institut für Zeitgeschichte,
Berlin): "What Is Not Prohibited Is Allowed. Legal Loopholes in the Czech
Privatization Process".
Sverre Flaatten (The Norwegian Police
University College): "Decriminalizing Creative Destruction in Norway.
Business Scandals and the Securities Laws of the Late 19th Century".
June 23
Panel 6: Business Law and Its Effects:
Patents and International Law (Chair: Thomas Welskopp)
Alexander Donges (University of Mannheim):
"The Consequences of a Radical Patent Regime Change. A Natural
Experiment".
Michael Schneider
(Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf): "The German Chemical Industry in
Transnational Perspective. Innovations and Global Patent Protection during the
Early 20th Century".
Nikitas E. Hatzimihail (University of
Cyprus): "Companies as Border-Crossing Legal Entities".
Miriam Frey (University of Bayreuth):
"Which Countries Mutually Recognize Commercial Court Decisions?".
Kontakt
Sebastian Teupe
Juniorprofessur für
Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät
Universität Bayreuth,
Universitätsstraße 30, 95447 Bayreuth
More information to be found on the website of H/Soz/Kult
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